I'm almost 45 years old and have only realised very recently that people break rules all the time. There's a gulf between what society tells us we are supposed to do and what actually happens in practice with most people. I've found Temple Grandin's four rule categories very useful (Really Bad Things, Courtesy Rules, Illegal but not Bad and Sins of the System).
The MP's expenses thing is really annoying - typical "do as we say, not as we do". I don't know whether it's a reason to stop NTs running things though, there are more of them than there are of us after all!